Even if you have zero interest in writing, you’ve probably seen a cab-yellow newsstand of catalogs for Gotham Writers Workshop, or the lime green advertisements for Sackett Street Writers Workshop. Since 2002, Sackett Street has worked with over 3,500 writers, and Gotham Writers (founded in 1993) currently averages 2,800 New Yorkers a year with their in-person classes. But trumping both of these two well-known programs is the less publicly glitzy group, New York Writers Coalition (NYWC). Founded in 2002, NYWC has worked with over 15,000 writers.
Their high numbers are due to the fact they’re public and don’t charge for classes. If you’ve seen creative writing workshop notices at a Brooklyn Public library, there’s a good chance it was arranged by NYWC. While Gotham and Sackett focus on literary writing (notice the stress on ‘workshop’ in their name) NY Writers Coalition is community-driven (the root word of ‘coalition’ is ‘coalesce’). They work to include veterans, seniors, at-risk youth, and people living with disabilities. In fact, their story began at a homeless shelter.
Shortly after graduate school at City College, Aaron Zimmerman, the founder of NYWC, was invited to run a poetry workshop at The Prince George Hotel, a homeless shelter in NoMad. He had just completed training at Amherst Writers & Artists, a group that emphasizes the value of positive comments in writing groups. He applied what he learned from AWA to the workshop; the results were inspiring.
“There were fantastic writers,” Zimmerman said. “Those beginnings were really eye-opening for me to work with people who came from different backgrounds. It shattered all the stereotypes out there.”
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